The Philippines, which is one of the poorest and least developed nations on the planet, has had little hand in creating the conditions that nurtured Typhoon Haiyan (or Yolanda, as it’s known locally), possibly the worst storm in recorded human history.

Yeb Saño choked up while speaking at the international climate conference in Warsaw in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), which is estimated to have killed more than 10,000 people: “I speak for the countless people who will no longer be able to speak for themselves after perishing from the storm.”

Potentially the most powerful typhoon on record, Haiyan swept across the Philippines on Friday and is heading for Vietnam, leaving a massive wake of death and destruction. But wait for the death toll—early reports rarely bear up.

With financial losses climbing, Fukushima operator Tepco wants to fire up reactors at another site. The question is, how much of an appetite does Japan have for nuclear power as Fukushima continues to leak radioactive water, an environmental catastrophe whose extent is still unknown.

With Japanese authorities still struggling to contain contamination at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant two-and-a-half years after it melted down, we are reminded by events in the news that the disaster lies in one of the most volatile meteorological and geographical regions in the world.

The Philippines has had its share of weather-borne excitement already this year, as a whopping 10 typhoons have made their way to its shores, and the 10th has qualified for the special and menacing category of “super typhoon.”

In 1998, 4,000 people died in the Yangtze floods in China. Now the country is bracing for its worst flooding since then as Typhoon Conson, which has already killed 38 people in the Philippines, closes in on China’s southern coast.

Typhoon Morakot has claimed more than 500 lives in Taiwan since the storm hit the island’s southern region a week ago. Thousands more may still be trapped, according to local reports, making Morakot the worst natural disaster to strike the island in half a century.